Free Download: Bolt 2.0 beta web browser w/ tab support

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BOLT is a free downloadable browser that offers full featured web browsing lower-end mobile phones and BlackBerry. Rather than offering a simplified, mini version of the Internet, BOLT provides users with a fast, efficient, feature-rich way to enjoy full PC-style web pages and rich media applications on all levels of mobile devices.

Built on Bitstream's ThunderHawk browsing technology, BOLT is the result of 5+ years experience developing mobile browsers that optimize usability, speed and performance on resource-constrained systems with limited memory, processing power and screen space.

2.0 will be available in the morning. I guess launch times for link updates at shows are usually sometime before 10am. Its a pretty good update.

The most important new feature of BOLT 2.0 is the addition of tabbed browsing, letting people simultaneously browse multiple websites and easily switch between them. The second generation of BOLT also maintains all the features of the first generation BOLT browser, including:

• Rendering of Web pages on any class of phone, scoring 100 percent on the Web Standard's project Acid3 test.
• Streaming video from many of the world's most popular video sharing websites, including YouTube, MySpace, Blip.TV and MetaCafe, as well as websites that stream videos such as CNN, ESPN and any website with embedded YouTube videos.
• Super fast download speeds.
• Copy and pasting text.
• Built-in integration with Twitter and Facebook.
• Password manager.
• Download/Upload manager.
• Ability to run Web-based applications written in Ajax, Javascript and other Web programming languages, ranging from Google docs to Mafia Wars.
• The inclusion of widgets, standalone mobile applications that are run directly from the browser, such as a weather app, calendar app, calculator, Twitter client and others. These widgets let people using any phone take part in the mobile apps revolution.
• Best of breed over-the-air data compression, resulting in faster load times and decreased data usage.
• Patented split screen viewing to make surfing complicated Web pages simple, and viewing content on the smallest of screens easy.

Additional notable upgrades in BOLT 2.0 include a faster widget gallery with updated user interface and a server upgrade to WebKit 4.03.

One issue I had with 1.7 is that for formus (such as Pinstack and some sports ones I belong to), if I didn't re-visit them with a day or so, I would have to re-log into them. BB browser and Opera would keep me logged in if I requested, but it appeared that Bolt would not. Does anyone know if that particular issue was addressed?

Other than that, it's a great, versatile browswer. I look forward to test driving 2.0.

I tried it out on my pearl and it worked so-so. As far as the speed, great. But when I tried to get onto a few different forum sites, including Pinstack, there were still a few things that for some reason it would not allow me to do. Example, I logged in to Pinstack, went to my control panel, and the only thing it would let me see was my latest posts. It wouldn't go to my threads, my albums, trust received, or trust given. Then I went to another site where I had to enter a code in order to download something, and even after I entered the code it did nothing. But still a great upgrade from 1.7.